What self-driving cars want, and what people want from them, varies widely. And often these desires are at odds with each other. For instance, carmakers – and the designers of the software that will run autonomous vehicles – know that it’s safest if cars stay far away from each other. But traffic engineers know that if every car operated to ensure lots of surrounding space, local roads and highways alike would be clogged for miles, and nobody would get anywhere.

Another inherent conflict involves how cars handle crises. No consumer wants to buy a self-driving car that’s programmed, even in the most remote of circumstances, to kill its driver instead of someone else (even if it would save a class of kindergarteners or a group of Nobel Prize winners). However, if every car is programmed always to save its occupants at any cost, pedestrians and cyclists are at risk.

As federal regulations for self-driving cars advance in congressional votes and the U.S. Department of Transportation issues guidelines, an important part of real progress will be how everyone involved approaches those inherent conflicts. Research at the University of Florida Transportation Institute, where I serve as the director, shows that the key to resolving these competitions of goals is communication among all the elements of the transportation network – cars, pedestrians, bicycles, guardrails, traffic lights, stop signs, roadways themselves and everything else. And if they’re all going to talk to each other, the people who make all those things need to talk to each other too.

Our institute is providing opportunities to do that. Our efforts include working with the Florida Department of Transportation and the City of Gainesville to set up an autonomous shuttle between the UF campus and downtown Gainesville and partnering with industry to create a testing area for autonomous cars and other advanced transportation technologies on campus roads and surrounding highways. But with so little coordination in today’s transportation world, there’s a long way to go.

Problems large and small

The city of Atlanta is one of many communities – including Gainesville, Florida – exploring the technology and effects of self-driving cars. AP Photo/Johnny Clark

The road system in the U.S. has serious problems. Americans spend more than 40 hours per year stuck in traffic; more than 30,000 people die each year in crashes on U.S. roads, making cars one of the leading causes of death for Americans under the age of 64. These are serious problems, and many hope that autonomous cars can help solve them.

The city of Atlanta is one of many communities – including Gainesville, Florida – exploring the technology and effects of self-driving cars. AP Photo/Johnny ClarkNationwide statistics can mask smaller issues, though. The country’s transportation system is full of examples where coordination and collaboration would be extremely helpful., and even where the individual components may work but the system overall isn’t as streamlined as it could be.

Many communities have major roads where drivers have to stop unnecessarily because traffic lights aren’t coordinated among the different towns drivers pass through. And because different government agencies operate highways and local roads, when emergencies happen, drivers aren’t always rerouted smoothly or efficiently.

Making a place for testing

With the Florida Department of Transportation and the city of Gainesville, our institute is building what we’re calling I-STREET, a testing infrastructure for autonomous vehicles and related technologies. As new components such as sensors and other monitoring equipment are installed on roads and highways in and around the university’s campus, researchers will be able to evaluate a range of advanced technologies. For instance, we’ll use cars that can talk to the other elements of the system, including each other, and can drive themselves on roads equipped with sensors to monitor traffic conditions.

When self-driving cars and traffic lights can talk to each other, they can adjust cars’ speeds and the timing of red and green lights to help every car move more smoothly.Dr. Lily Elefteriadou

In preliminary simulations, we have found real savings in travel time with self-driving vehicles that can communicate with their surroundings and adjust their paths on the go. For example, when self-driving cars and traffic lights can talk to each other, they can adjust cars’ speeds and the timing of red and green lights to help every car move more smoothly. Depending on the level of traffic and the number of self-driving cars mixed into human-driven traffic, travel times can drop by 16 to 36 percent, which may save nearly a minute of delay per car.

On highways, a major bottleneck happens around on-ramps, where entering vehicles may have trouble finding openings in fast-moving traffic. When frustrated drivers force their way onto the road, nearby cars must brake abruptly and may even crash. I helped develop an algorithm that uses information from self-driving vehicles to plan optimal paths for them. It can tell the cars already on the highway to move to the leftmost lane, making room for entering vehicles. Our simulations show that everyone’s collective travel time can be reduced by as much as 35 percent for the area around the on-ramp, or about 40 seconds per vehicle when traffic is heavy.

This type of intercar communication, coupled with the involvement of road sensors on the highway and in the on-ramp, can be built only if governments, contractors and international car manufacturers work together. That can ensure not only that individual vehicles are safe but also that the entire traffic system functions efficiently.

SunTrust Gator Gallop

UF Black Alumni Weekend

UF Homecoming Parade

UF Engineering students in the Benton Engineering Council (BEC) participate in the UF Homecoming Parade each year. This year’s theme is “That’s what I call a Growl!” and is dedicated to Winfred Phillips, former engineering dean and vice president of research at UF. The “throwback” float will made out of custom laser-cut geometric shapes. Catch them as they represent the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering at the UF Homecoming Parade! https://www.facebook.com/events/1480542765368917/

For Aysegul Gunduz, assistant professor in the University of Florida’s J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, forging new paths in the landscape of patient care is at the forefront of her research.

Her research strategy involves studying neural correlates of behavior and disease, and aftereffects of stimulation in neural networks to improve deep brain stimulation therapy.

For her biomedical research and commitment to diversity, Gunduz has been awarded the Denice Denton Emerging Leader ABIE Award by the Anita Borg Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on the advancement of women in computing.

The award recognizes a junior faculty member for high-quality research and significant positive impact on diversity.

“The Anita Borg Institute is thrilled to honor Dr. Aysegul Gunduz with the 2017 ABIE Award for The Denise Denton Emerging Leader ABIE Award,” said Telle Whitney, the organization’s CEO and President. “Because of her groundbreaking biomechanical research and her evident commitment to promoting diversity in academia, Ayse[gul] serves as a role model for all women technologists.”

Gunduz and her team in the Brain Mapping Laboratory aim to translate neural biomarkers of disease into clinical diagnostic and therapeutic systems to improve the quality of life of those suffering from neurological disorders. Working with patients who undergo surgical treatment allows her team to capture the electrical wave patterns of the human brain, and the data are converted into a visual brain map. Gunduz and her team analyze the data to help patients with epilepsy, Tourette syndrome, Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor.

“There can be great pain and suffering for patients with neurological disorders,” Gunduz said. “Helping to understand the electrophysiological markers of a disease can help us develop more effective treatments to improve the quality of life for these patients.”

Connecting with women is another important factor in her leadership role in the department. Gunduz is the current president of the Association for Academic Women (AAW) at the University of Florida and has been involved since 2012.

Aysegul Gunduz, Ph.D. will be presented the Denice Denton Emerging Leader ABIE Award at the conference for her research and impact on diversity.

Terry Moore (left) and Aysegul Gunduz (right), both part of the American Association for Women, received the UF Provost’s Excellence Award for Assistant Professors, which recognizes research accomplishments by junior faculty members.

Collaboration is a critical skill needed in many fields, but particularly in computer science, where many people often work together on a larger project. It is a skill that is not intrinsic; it must be learned. Bringing students together to share ideas tends to yield a familiar pattern: confident students become more confident, while less experienced students conclude that instead of their sharing ideas, they should defer to the kids who have better ones.

“If we can revolutionize the way kids learn to collaborate, I believe we can transform the faces of our classrooms and workplaces for the better, to be more diverse,” said Boyer. “It will be a hard and long-term undertaking, but I believe it is one that is long overdue.”

An expert in human-centered computing, Boyer will use animated computer characters called intelligent virtual agents to teach and support upper elementary students with best practices when it comes to constructive and equitable dialogue in a group setting. The agents are designed to engage in conversations with each other and with students. They can provide personalized support and incorporate every student’s ideas into the larger collaboration, in this case, a computer science project. They help teach the students how to put everyone’s best ideas forward.

“In an era when there is so much discussion in academia about what type of schools are most effective for learning, Dr. Boyer is looking at what type of learning fosters success,” said Forrest Masters, associate dean for research and facilities at UF’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. “We know that students who learn how to collaborate in the classroom are more successful, in school and in the workforce. Dr. Boyer is cracking the code on how to teach that critical skill.”

Boyer’s research focuses on how natural language dialogue and intelligent systems can support human learning across educational contexts including within and outside the classroom. She earned her master’s degree in industrial and systems engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in computer science at North Carolina State University. She joined the faculty at UF in 2015 during the UF Preeminence initiative and is part of UF’s interdisciplinary Online Learning Institute.

]]>Dean Cammy Abernathy Welcomes New Gator Engineershttps://www.eng.ufl.edu/newengineer/events/welcome-gator-engineers-uf21/
Mon, 21 Aug 2017 21:11:59 +0000https://www.eng.ufl.edu/newengineer/?p=22147Dean Cammy Abernathy welcomed new students at the Engineering Convocation on August 17, 2017. The following are excerpts from her speech.

Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering Dean Cammy Abernathy welcomes new Gator Engineers to the University of Florida.

Welcome Class of 2021! We are so happy to welcome you to one of the best colleges of engineering in the world. Gator Engineering began 107 years ago, with five faculty, 48 students in civil, mechanical and electrical engineering. The first graduating class consisted of five men. Tuition to attend UF in the fall of 1910 was $120 per year — including room and board. And perhaps hardest of all to fathom, even though there was a football team, there was as yet no football stadium known as The Swamp!

A few things have changed since then. Unlike your counterparts from 107 years ago, you won’t be wearing suits and ties to class; you’re not all men; there are definitely more than 48 of you; and you will most likely spend some time in The Swamp watching football.

However, some things have remained the same. Like those from the past, you too are now at the beginning of a breathtaking journey. I assure you, you cannot possibly determine where you will be at the end of your journey from what you see now. If you stay the course, you are about to experience a transformation… a transformation of your abilities and your possibilities… of what you can do for yourself, and what you can do for humanity.

You can look at just about every major technology system deployed in the last 50 years and find the work of a Gator Engineer that made it happen. From the Apollo missions to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge to the NVIDIA GPU, Gator Engineers have been on the team that made it happen.

Photos from the Engineering Convocation are available on Flickr.com/gatorengineering

The namesake of our college, Dr. Herbert Wertheim is a great example. He was a student in our electrical engineering program in the 60’s before he went on to develop the first dyes to enable tinting of plastic lenses. His work eventually led to technology to prevent eye damage from UV radiation and treat neural diseases like Parkinson’s. Like many of his fellow UF alums, his work has improved the lives of millions. And you should understand, you can do the same! You really can.

Graduating from this college will give you the education, the skills and the opportunities to really make a positive difference in our world. And when you see for the first time, something that you designed – an app, a new drug, a building – that sense of having done something worthwhile that is advancing society is an experience you will never forget.

So I am often asked, “What can a student do to maximize their chances of finishing an engineering degree program?” The number one ingredient to getting an engineering degree is……each other. Look around you, there’s the secret to success in this program. Students who form a network with each other, students that have similar goals – and by that, I mean students who are focused on building, designing, creating and solving. Those students tend to be the most successful in engineering, not just in school but in their careers afterwards as well.

Photos from the Engineering Convocation are available on Flickr.com/gatorengineering

The experience of working as a team, competing as a team, and sometimes failing as a team is exactly what happens when you go to work. If you go through your entire UF experience without struggling with something, then you are selling yourself short, because that means you are not reaching your potential. So, do not let the fear of failure prevent you from seeing what you are made of and if you do fail at something, pick yourself up and get back in the game, because that’s how you get better.

We talk about our college as being an extended family. Families sometimes fuss at each other a bit, they don’t always agree, but strong families stick together, they help each other, they’re kind to one another. Families are built day by day through small acts of kindness, through mutual respect, willingness to not only understand but embrace those traits and experiences and beliefs that make each of us a unique human being.

This is the first day of your life with your new extended family, your first opportunity to get to know all of your new Gator cousins. And believe me they want to welcome you to the family – so begin to form that network that I told you was so important.

And remember, it’s great to be a Florida Gator – but it’s even better to be a Gator Engineer!

]]>Chemical Engineering’s Department Chair to join NSFhttps://www.eng.ufl.edu/newengineer/che/chemical-engineerings-department-chair-join-nsf/
Wed, 09 Aug 2017 20:40:37 +0000https://www.eng.ufl.edu/newengineer/?p=22125Professor Richard Dickinson will join the National Science Foundation this August, taking a rotation as the director of the Chemical, Biological, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET) Division. He will retain his faculty position with the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, returning to the University of Florida campus with the valuable experience of having worked within a federal research funding agency in Washington.

With 16 programs and a budget of nearly $200 million, the CBET division is the primary source of NSF research funding for the chemical engineering, bioengineering, and environmental engineering academic communities. It is largely responsible for determining future advances in fuels, manufacturing techniques, and next-generation medical therapies.

“This prestigious appointment is quite an honor for Dr. Dickinson and for UF,” said Cammy Abernathy, dean of the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. “It’s a testament to Dr. Dickinson’s stature in the chemical and bioengineering communities.”

In his eight years as chair of UF’s Department of Chemical Engineering, Dickinson has led the department through a period of substantial growth, including a steady increase in graduate and undergraduate enrollment numbers. He helped raise $16 million from generous alumni to secure research and educational programs for the department, completed funding and construction of the new Chemical Engineering Student Center, completely overhauled the Undergraduate Unit Operations Laboratory, and implemented several new hands-on laboratory courses for the graduate program.

“Serving the department for the last eight years has been a tremendous honor and privilege,” said Dickinson. “I am thrilled for this opportunity to lead CBET in its mission to identify and explore the frontiers of engineering research that will benefit the nation’s health, economy, and environment.”

The search for Dickinson’s replacement will begin this fall. Professor Carlos Rinaldi, the Charles A. Stokes Term Professor, has agreed to serve as interim chair for the Department of Chemical Engineering. Dr. Rinaldi also has a joint appointment in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering. His research interests are in biomedical applications and the hydrodynamics of magnetic particles. He received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2006.

Now two University of Florida researchers have been awarded a $2.6 million grant by the National Institutes of Health to study the development of a vaccine in mouse models that could delay a relapse of MS, a bit like a flu or chickenpox vaccination.

A key to their work is the vaccine’s ability to narrowly target an undesirable immune response causing MS while leaving intact a patient’s general immunity to infection and disease.

The collaboration is based on Keselowsky’s pioneering work using the vaccine method as a treatment for Type 1 diabetes.

“We want to give hope to people with multiple sclerosis,” said Avram. “You cannot cure MS. There is no way. But the hope of this treatment would be to extend the remission period in the patient and keep the patient with an intact immune response in such a way that it can respond to infections.”

An estimated 2.5 million people worldwide and 400,000 in the United States have the disease, according to the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation. About 200 new cases are diagnosed each week in the U.S.

MS is a debilitating neurological and inflammatory disease that typically affects young adults. In patients with MS, the body’s immune cells target and destroy the myelin sheath that wraps nerve cells like the insulation on a wire. This invariably makes it difficult for the central nervous system to communicate with the rest of the body.

Keselowsky and Avram’s grant proposes using microscopic particles composed of the same material used to make sutures, which easily dissolve in the body and already are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. These particles then deliver specific antigens – molecules that induce a response by the immune system – and other agents that essentially reprogram the T cells’ behavior and their ability to recruit other immune cell populations.

The hoped result is that the T cells and other immune cell populations are then less likely to attack and destroy the myelin sheath protecting nerve cells.

The technique works like a therapeutic vaccine, re-educating the body’s immune response and blocking the attack.

“We are hoping to do the treatment during the remission phase of MS to extend the remission so the mouse patients do not go back into relapse, which is ideal,” Avram said.

And the antigen delivery by the microscopic particles is so specific, she said, it is believed that it will not generally suppress the immune system.

The grant, she said, also allows researchers to study the mechanism by which the vaccine operates and to determine whether it can be extended during the relapse of the disease. In addition, Avram noted the goal is to extend the vaccine treatment to patients and to other immune diseases.

The Research Project Grant, commonly called an RO1, is NIH’s oldest and most competitive. Among RO1 applications by established principal investigators to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – the NIH institute overseeing Avram’s grant – about 11 percent of proposals are funded.

This article was written by Bill Levesque and originally appeared on UF Health.

Liza Kholodkova used to be frustrated at the amount of time and effort spent sketching a mural on a wall — a process that used to take days, and even weeks, by hand. Now she has a robot do it for her.

Her invention, named Botsy, helps artists get the job done faster by automatically drawing any design on a vertical surface. The robot uses software to generate a control file that can be sent via Bluetooth to start outlining.

“It really helps speed up the creative process,” Kholodkova said.

The 25-year-old created Botsy’s prototype after graduating from the University of Florida with a dual degree in mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering in 2015. It took her two years to finalize the product.

Last year, the University of Florida’s Integrated Product and Process Design program commissioned her to create a mural in the department’s hallway at the College of Engineering.

After finding an artist best suited to create the design, she began preparing for what will be the largest mural her robot will create.

The piece, which will be 30-by-6 feet, features diverse technologies and disciplines involved in IPPD, including images of drones and 3D-printers.

“The mural is going to make the hallway more unique and personal,” she said. “It’s a physical representation of the spirit of IPPD.”

IPPD Director Keith Stanfill said he commissioned Kholodkova because he wanted to make the hallway more memorable to students.

“There wasn’t anything inspiring about our hallway before,” he said. “I thought this mural would be a great way to blend art and technology, which speaks to what we want our engineers to be: well-rounded people.”

Stanfill, who also taught Kholodkova, said he was impressed with her speedy progress with the mural.

The outline would have normally taken at least one week, Kholodkova said. Botsy finished it in four hours.

“I want this hallway to inspire people before they walk through the door to the design lab and I want folks visiting to remember this place,” said Stanfill.